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Andy Lane & Greg Whyte
64 Plays3 years ago
In podcast episode #46 we have the first of our guest hosts. Andy Lane, Professor of Sport Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton is hosting and interviewing his friend Greg Whyte.
Greg Whyte, is a former Olympian and Sports Scientist. He won European bronze and World Championship silver medals, and competed in two Olympic Games.
Greg has been involved in training and coaching celebrities on some huge challenges including Eddie Izzard, David Walliams, John Bishop, Davina & more!
Listen to hear the 2 professors talking about:
Goals,
Coaching olympians,
Creating belief, confidence & motivation,
Adapting your training and lots more!
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Enjoy!
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to episode 46 of the UK Sports Chat Podcast. I'm Joe Williams, and in today's episode, we have the first of our guest hosts. Today, Andy Lane, Professor of Sports Psychology at the University of Wolverhampton is our host, and he is interviewing his friend Greg White. Greg White, OBE, is a former Olympian and sports scientist. He won European bronze and world championship silver medals and competed in two Olympics, representing Great Britain in the modern pentathlon.
00:00:30
Speaker
Greg has been involved in Comet Relief, his role has been to train and coach celebrities to do the challenges and sport relief, the charity challenges such as comedian David Walliams, John Bishop, James Cracknell, Sheryl Cole, Gary Barlow, Eddie Izzard, Davina McCall and more. If you listen to hear the two professors talking about goals, coaching Olympians, creating beliefs, confidence and motivation, adapting your training and loads more, there's really lots in this.
00:00:59
Speaker
If you have any comments, please get in touch via our social media channels or you can email info at UKrunchat.co.uk.
Reminiscing and Coaching Highlights
00:01:07
Speaker
In the meantime, have a fantastic week and over to Andy and Greg. Welcome, everybody. Here we have Andy Lane and Greg White, two professors, two professors that have known each other for over 30 years. I think that's right. I know. I know. I know. He has tried to hide.
00:01:28
Speaker
He has tried to hide from me, but I have found him each time. Greg is a world-famous sports scientist. He's a two-time Olympian. I remember him training for the third Olympics. I stayed at his house for a while where he used to practice the shooting above my head, which was
00:01:54
Speaker
and a sign of the difficult times. That is why my hair is looking so thin.
Training Philosophy and Techniques
00:02:06
Speaker
The bullets are wasting off the top. Greg Moore is more well known recently for all his work with celebrities
00:02:13
Speaker
doing some amazing challenges. David Walliams first swam the channel, which at the time, it was an amazingly difficult, it remains an amazingly difficult feat. And if anyone ever thinks about doing that, they just need to go down to the sea and start swimming out and then the bite of the cold look out and think, oh, only another 23 miles to go or so, how difficult that challenge is and how,
00:02:41
Speaker
And hopefully, what we get through this today, how the mindset of someone goes from that is an enormously difficult challenge that I am prepared to take on and I think I have a good chance of being able to do. So that's what we're going to be trying to officially out. Greg's got a book, Achieving Impossible, which is absolutely fantastic, and a website called The White Answer, which I think also is excellent. So Greg, welcome.
00:03:10
Speaker
Thank you, Andy, very kind. And you found me again. Here I am in the office and you found me. So Greg, tell us a little bit about some of the exploits you've got up to in terms of working with people to do some of the amazing things. What's the highlight of all of those things? That's a bit the biggest challenge we've gone through.
00:03:37
Speaker
That's an interesting question, actually, Andy, because I think, I mean, there's such a breath. I think obviously the most well-known ones are the sport relief and comic relief challenges. And I've looked after 32 of those, believe it or not. So which, you know, from a run perspective, everyone will remember Eddie is 43 marathons in 51 days. But many of them included running Davina McCall. We ran a marathon at the end of an ultra triathlon from Edinburgh down to London.
00:04:06
Speaker
We ran 30 miles around 30 miles with John Bishop in the arc to arch, you know, so actually a lot of them have included running through that. But actually, I think I mean, and they have been great challenges and really fabulous, really very special. But I think probably it's the ones with others that I've been some of my, you know, most epic challenges. I remember training for women to swim across the English Channel, which was just probably my favorite challenge of all time.
00:04:32
Speaker
But I've worked with a heart transplant patient, a guy called Kevin Mashford, absolutely amazing. I trained the first paraplegic, James Wood, to swim across the English Channel. I mean, that was some going. That was a really amazing achievement. And then actually, last year, probably the most recent one, I had a client from the US, and we broke the world record for seven marathons on seven continents.
00:04:59
Speaker
When I say this, I still think to myself, that can't be right. But including the flight time and the running, so flight time and running, seven continents, we did it in 81 and a half hours, which is just, you know, just truly phenomenal. And that was with a guy who'd never run a marathon before. So, yeah, I mean, it's quite a breadth of different things. And I love it, as you can tell from all the ones I've done. But when they come to you and they describe this,
00:05:30
Speaker
What's the sort of breakdown point? So where do we start the training? And quite often, because we've worked with some of the adulterous assurance before, is that often people want to, A, get into be doing something, want to get into some enormous amounts of training. And it's sort of how to sort of charter them through where you're at now and where you've got to go to.
00:05:54
Speaker
Because I find that one of those really difficult parts, because they often want to start too close to the end, and the bit close to the end is often not quite near where they think it's going to be. No, absolutely right. It's funny because there's multiple stages in it, and I think it really does. The importance of a coach, I think, is understanding and establishing who the performer is and what that performer is and how they pick.
00:06:20
Speaker
and try and understand them because it is a very much a bespoke approach. I think you know sometimes you sort of think oh it's just can't paste and all they do is just can't paste the program in but it's not it really is about understanding that and you know at one end of the spectrum the work I've done with Olympians is the big problem you've got with those guys is that they overdo it just too much too much more.
00:06:41
Speaker
and they're so desperate for it and they will bang things in. And listen, me and you have worked with Olympic athletes on a number of occasions where what you find is they've got secret training that actually, in their minds, what's really interesting about it? And I think that it's akin to other disorders, things like obesity is that it's the interpretation of what they're doing is slightly different.
00:07:04
Speaker
So I remember one athlete, a very famous athlete, um, Olympian who, um, who was clearly over-training. She had all sorts of problems, um, loss of menstrual, uh, functions. So she had amenorrhea, she had low bone mineral density. And, and I, I sat with her about the training she was doing. She noted down the training. I looked at her, I thought, that's not, that's not that much. So I said to her, look, what we're going to, what I'm going to do is pop an active, uh, actograph on you. So just some wearable tech and we'll just see what you're doing every morning.
00:07:35
Speaker
every morning, every day, 90 minute run, which he hadn't written down on the bit of paper. And I questioned her about it and I said, is that, is this exactly what you're doing? She said, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. And I said to her, you know, what, what's this 90 minutes? Oh, that's just a, that's just a warmup for the, for the day, 90 minutes a day, every day, you know? And I think, and to her, it wasn't a run. It was just a shakeout, you know?
00:08:01
Speaker
which is interesting. And then, of course, you know, the other end of that spectrum is actually working with people who simply do not understand how difficult it is going to be, who don't have the same understanding of self, who, you know, I mean, the classics of those were the sport relief and common relief, people who were, to some extent, physically illiterate, they'd never really been into sport, they never really didn't really understand themselves and how to develop that in themselves. And of course, the approach at either end of that spectrum,
00:08:30
Speaker
is incredibly different about how you structure training and of course everybody lies somewhere on that continuum and what you're trying to do is discern who they are where they are in that continuum and then actually create the bespoke program for them to make sure that you optimize what they're doing. Yeah, did I get into
00:08:55
Speaker
their goals and that sort of thing and monitoring it and then judging where they're close to getting to it. Yeah. I mean, for me, goals are everything. I think any structured plan, any periodised plan has to have goals. You can't create a plan without goal setting. It's as simple as that.
00:09:17
Speaker
And I think, you know, and that's the long term goal obviously what we're trying to do we're trying to run 43 marathons or swim the channel or, you know, break the world record. You know that that's the long term plan but then the medium term plans, what are the key markers within that medium to say you know for marathon for example you know it's like,
00:09:35
Speaker
You know, if you want to run a three hour marathon, you got to be able to run a 120 half. So there's your medium term goal straight away about running that. But of course, downstream from that, if you want to run a 120 half, you've got to be able to run a 36 sub 10K. And so therefore you've got to be able to run a circa 17 minute 5K.
00:09:56
Speaker
you know and we can talk about those calculations and algorithms etc but to some extent what the main goal creates the medium term goal and the short term goals within that and what's crucial is that you know what our job as as coaching is to make sure the athlete understands now again some athletes need that information they need data they need those lines in the sand very definitively and they measure themselves on it constantly whereas others
00:10:26
Speaker
It means absolutely nothing to them. And again, you have to nurture some people to move towards them. Others, you have to rein them back. So they're not racing at it, trying to get that, that medium term goal too early. Cause what, what happened is they'll break down. They'll be injured or sick, but, but 100%, you know, goals are everything. And without, without the framework of those goals, if you think about it in human terms, it's like the skeleton, those goals create the skeleton.
00:10:53
Speaker
around which you're going to place the meat, which is the training sessions in order to reach those goals. So you're absolutely right. Goals are key. I agree completely. And what I find with lots of the endurance athletes, it does differ by sport, but they are quite outcome focused in terms of they're looking at how fast it takes to an X distance.
00:11:19
Speaker
and judging and their judgment they get quite negative when they don't get the good time that they want to and in training they miss out on those times and almost inevitably my mind because the the course is not set up for them to go that quickly for starters and their mind is not set up to go that quickly from the start and I try to encourage them to get a process mindset
00:11:42
Speaker
And how that varies from sport by sport. And thinking, I've been doing a lot of concept to rowing, you do not escape ongoing feedback. That's the first bit. And seeing that is brutal. Trying to cover it up is very difficult. You sort of say to someone, think of a process goal. And they go, what's a process goal? And I say, OK, what about thinking of technique? So if it's rowing, think of long arms,
00:12:08
Speaker
And then think of the three phases of the rowing stroke. So you're going to catch, you're going to engage the legs and then you're going to pull back and then you're going to recover and really, and just try and think through those different ways. Get an image of them in your mind and so on. Or in running is the classic, I think, to imagine or to watch someone's feet in front of you and try and synchronise your feet to their running and think of running smoothly. And then the run tall type things and all those sort of techniques.
00:12:39
Speaker
But they find it so difficult. And how has that gone with some of the sports or athletes you've used? And what's interesting on that, Andy, I think, is it has actually been made even more difficult with some people because of wearable tech. I think we've had this chat over Twitter before about
00:13:01
Speaker
how it has ruined running for some people, having a watch on and knowing what your kilometer pace is and what your heart rate is and what's going on.
00:13:14
Speaker
I built my career on that. In the early days, exercise physiology, that's what it was. It was understanding those zones, understanding what was the heart rate anaerobic threshold, what pace are we looking at? Are we looking at stochastic variable pace going through? Are we looking at square? All those sort of things. They are incredibly important.
00:13:35
Speaker
But it's how you use them, which I think is key. And if you take a look at it, I think one of the big problems actually is that the whole of sport has been infected by it, particularly linear endurance sport in general.
00:13:48
Speaker
And so you look at bikes now, you know, you've got power meters, you've got, you know, you've got your GPS on, so you've got speed, you've got power, you've got your heart rate, you've got your cadence. I mean, death by data is what it is, you know, and, and for some people that's great because they live by it and they love it. And they, and I think the difference is they know how to use it. They know when it's important, but for others, it can absolutely destroy it. So again, I think it comes down to that bespoke approach is understanding what it is.
00:14:17
Speaker
And I think the biggest danger, and I see this in my own training, I think the biggest danger is when you set a goal for a session. And when we talk about those goals, I mean, I've got, you know, if you work with me, you have a goal for a session. It's not, this is not a three a month goal or a six weeks goal, it's a session goal.
00:14:35
Speaker
And on a long run, what I'm trying to do is hold race pace, hold race pace for those long runs. And I do this thing called reverse periodization. So what I do is I'll increase it at race pace as we go through. So what you're trying to do is actually hit each kilometer mark or mile mark at a given pace. And I think the thing that I see in myself and actually see in a lot of people that I work with is that as soon as they start to slip away from that goal,
00:15:05
Speaker
It's a disaster. It's the worst run they've had. It's absolutely horrible. And the negative feedback they then get from that. So they're out for a 20 miler and the target is five minute kilometers. And all of a sudden they've gone through the half marathon and bang on time, 1 45. And then all of a sudden they start to slip off that and it goes to five, five Oh five, five 10. Oh, that's it. Rubbish.
00:15:31
Speaker
Rubbish session absolute disaster worst session I've ever had. I'm there's no way I'm going to do this and all that sort of stuff. Instead of actually thinking, look, it's a 20 mile run. And what you run that 20 in, you know, we're trying to target that. But I think what I have to think is with those goals is that they are movable. And there are lots of reasons why you know you might, you know,
00:15:53
Speaker
what the weather is, what the topography of the terrain is that you're going over, what you've done the day before, what happened with the family at the weekend. I mean, the list goes on of what can impact on a single session. And I think the key is just to be able to use all of that information to make sure you make the right judgment call. And that is that, are you dropping off the pace because you're too lazy and you can't be bothered?
00:16:15
Speaker
Or are you dropping off the pace? Because actually, there's a good reason to be dropping off the pace. And it still means that what you're getting from that 505-510, you're still getting good quality training impulse, which is making a difference to your outcome. So I think it's about balancing that. And I think the difficult thing is for people who don't have experience. So the guys that are coming into these environments are really new.
00:16:39
Speaker
is it's very difficult for them to understand that. And I think again, that's where the coach makes a big difference is just to really nurture them through that process. And so, you know, listen, you finished the 20. Fantastic. And actually you went through the half in bang on, on schedule. Brilliant. Next time, what we're going to do, we do a 20. We're going to try and squeeze that to 15, 16. And then all of a sudden, you know, it becomes, it becomes positive reinforcement instead of negative reinforcement.
00:17:08
Speaker
I mean, there's a couple of points that I think are really good there. And with my athletes, it's kind of E1, the process goal might be when it starts getting awkward, you need to switch on to what you're doing. And I quite like that if people go swimming, they haven't got all the distraction in front of them. These swimmers find no trouble at all to think about when it gets difficult to focus on the stroke.
00:17:37
Speaker
So you try, I mean, that's an encouragement. But what I then really liked then is to tie the goals in with the whole, not just the psychology of what your mindset is to focus on being, make the here and now as best as possible. But actually go, actually your physiological effort is also is an important part of this. And you could be achieving five minutes per kilometer, but it could be an intensity which is really unsustainable for anything but your one off race.
00:18:06
Speaker
And so having those physiological goals, which say, well, actually, when I've trained for marathons, I said, well, actually, I've failed to do three hours many times. But you've got to be able to kick through the hard bit and have something left for the end. And I was going to the lab and find my thresholds, and then push the thresholds, and then train within the threshold, which you're going to do for marathons, which I'd know my heart rate zone of 130 to 150.
00:18:35
Speaker
And I said, OK, well, my two-hour runs are in 150. And if I'm running at 147, then it's hard. And that's slow. And it's slower than what I'm normal, but I'm doing 147. Then I stick at 147, because that is achieving that goal. Because what I am doing is I then reframe it in my head to say what my goal here is adaption, is progress. It's not to achieve. And in the end, on the race day,
00:19:03
Speaker
I'll I am prepared to push to 150 160 if need to but on the training day my goal is adaption and it's like and this is the bit I think is really important for people to do is to sit down beforehand and make sure they're clear what the goal is and stick to the goal and when I see that goal being achieved and how you're going to achieve that goal is it stops you you know it stops your mind racing to go I am
00:19:33
Speaker
I can't do that. Yeah. I think what's interesting though is that, you know, and herein lies the sort of debate you have, I mean, I have it constantly about how do you program? Do you program based on power output and speed? Or do you program on what is fundamentally the most important measure? And that is heart rate. Now, why, you know, and I've been doing this three decades now, right?
00:20:01
Speaker
And to some extent, that was what you had at the time. You didn't have power meters. GPS was nonexistent. And so therefore, we used heart rate. But the great thing about heart rate is it's a global measure of physiologic function and physiologic intensity. So when you look at your heart rate, you know that's how hard you're working. What the speed output of that is, or the power output of that is, may be something entirely different.
00:20:28
Speaker
You know, but what that and you're absolutely right. And what we're trying to do is bring about adaptation within that specific zone so that on race day, what we then do is we become more economic. We can run faster at the same relative physiologic load. And so therefore it becomes sustainable. You know, you're absolutely right. So if you look at my program, it's almost invariably based upon heart rate when I program athletes.
00:20:54
Speaker
Because what I want them to be able to do, what I want to see is what's your running speed at that physiological load? That's the more important question. Not how fast, you know, how hard can you push yourself to sustain a particular speed? You know, so I think it's just, it sounds a bit, you know, it sounds the same, but it's not, it's just flipping that around. So you never have a disappointing run. If your target is
00:21:23
Speaker
If you're looking for 140 to 150 on a long run, you never have a bad run if you say 140, 150. If your target is five minutes a kilometer and you drop it down to 502, you could see that as disappointing. And yet the physiologic demand and the adaptation is optimal because you're in that zone where you're looking for. So again, it's the goal. Make sure the goal is right. And that will make sure that you deliver on that goal.
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah, I like that part. I mean, the other part of your training, which is I like and which is not, is that instead of for marathons, it's sort of getting accustomed to the pace and then growing the distance. And what I followed those sorts of training programs, that week one of the training program isn't harder than week 12.
00:22:15
Speaker
by week 12 you adapted into week one perfectly it's got no it's got no harder and all you've noticed as you've gone through is the progression your adaptation and that
00:22:28
Speaker
I think that's missing a lot of training in that what, you know, I'm a psychologist, you know, as people can make me confident. And I then look to try to make through their training, their training. And what I want is the training to make them confident. And then some of the techniques, imagery and goal setting, self thought, yeah, they can work, they won't work unless they won't work as well, or they'll be still, they won't really work.
00:22:55
Speaker
unless you've got that basis behind you. So where you got to have the adaptation and that utter confidence and belief that you've got the progress. What's key on that, Andy, I think is absolutely bang on, because I talk about this sort of ad infinitum now, and that is this idea that belief, confidence, motivation is one of the key ones. People often say, how do you motivate people?
00:23:25
Speaker
And I say, you know, with all of those things, with belief, with... So I just think about belief, commitment, and motivation. It's a triumvirate, but it's self-fulfilling. And that is the first and most important thing is that you believe that you can do it.
00:23:39
Speaker
Now, if on week one, what you do is you go out, if you have marathon training and on week one, you go out for a 20 miler as your first week's training and you basically crumble. You give up at 30 miles and you can't run for the next five days because you've got such bad doms. There's not a great deal of belief that's going to be developed from that.
00:24:03
Speaker
And because of that, you then start to think, oh, I'll never be able to do it. So what you then start to do is commit less. So you don't commit the time, the resources, the effort. And because of that, you then don't see the results. And because you're not seeing results, motivation goes down. Motivation goes down, your belief goes down, commitment goes down, and all of a sudden it becomes, it's descending. Whereas actually what the training program should be doing is actually developing that belief. And that is, you know, I'll tell you what, let's, what's race pace, you know, what you're looking for.
00:24:33
Speaker
Um, week one, we're going to go out for a five K at marathon race pace. Look at that. You can do five K boom. You're thinking, well, it's still a long way off 42, but actually I can do five K the next week. You're on eight K. Well, look at that. I'm an eight K when we're progressing tick, you know, and because of that, that belief starts to come. You don't think we can do this. You start to commit more. And as you commit more motivation rises, I think the key for everyone to remember is that
00:25:02
Speaker
These aren't innate things that people have. He's very motivated. He's not very motivated. What he's done is he's developed a strategy to enhance his motivation. And I think we have to build and create when it comes to belief, commitment, motivation, and things like confidence in whatever words we want to use. They are created. They're not innate.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah, they are. And I think the person's got to be fairly active in that monitoring program to see those benefits and be realistic as to why they've made improvements. Because I think one of the fragile, the fragile base of performance is when someone sites themselves up as a really quick performance and expects them to do that every week.
00:25:49
Speaker
because it's not, you know, it's not going to happen unless they site themselves up to the same way every week. And that isn't that realistic either. And that isn't people don't look at a lot. They say, well, I'm not going to get more mentally tough. You don't really need mental toughness. You need to accept where you're at physically. I mean, I do work with people say, can you help me overcome fatigue? And I say, yep. And so I'll be able to run and not get tired. Nope.
00:26:15
Speaker
OK, well, what will happen? Because what will happen is, is that you will be running to the point where it hurts again. All right. It'll just be a quicker place. That's all that happened. You'll run quickly. You won't overcome it. And what that fatigue is doing, it's an evolved mechanism to say, stop going. Our body can't cope. You'll push. And what I'll teach you to do is learn to interpret that as that's where I need to be.
00:26:41
Speaker
That's not, I'm not going to be, because if you're not at the point in, in many race, in almost any race at some point, at that point, you could have gone quicker. You could have gone quicker. It reminds me, it was a great conversation, but that was an athlete. I remember having a conversation with a mate of mine. He was a quick runner, quicker running than me. And I was a quicker swim than him. And he, I remember him saying to me, Whitey, I'd love to be able to swim as quick as you, man, because it just,
00:27:07
Speaker
It just wouldn't hurt as much. And I said to him, are you crazy? I said, I am hurting just as much as you are. The only difference is it hurts for less time. And that's the truth of it is you watch either you watch, you watch the boys running 205 on a marathon and they're not, it might look like they're comfortable, but they are hurting exactly the same as the guy who's running 420. And to my mind, it's wild. I always look at, I watched, you know, watch, you watch the big city marathons and I am
00:27:38
Speaker
Utterly inspired by the guys who are running the four, four and a half hours, because they are in the same purgatory as the two hour runner for twice as long. Now that's mental toughness right there. And so I think people sort of misunderstand that relationship, you know, and of course,
00:27:59
Speaker
To my mind, people say, why train hard? There's two reasons why you train hard, in my opinion. The first one is that the harder you train, the more you'll enjoy it.
00:28:09
Speaker
And I think that, and to some extent that's because you've learned what misery is. And I've, you know, this idea of a misery gauge is that you've actually reset that misery gauge. So you know where the misery is, number one. And number two is you get to the point at the end, that little bit quicker. And so you'll be sat in the pub while other people are still out on the course. And that, you know, that's two great reasons to train really, really hard enjoyment and a quicker finish.
00:28:36
Speaker
And I, I mean, you've hit the point, a real good point there is, and what people who run slowly do is don't give themselves credit for their mental toughness. And the fact that the, the, the exercise and intensity is how hard can I push, which is not, and how hard can I push is not the same as how fast can I go? Because if you're, if you are a machine like Mo Farah or Usain Bolt, that when I hit the, how hard can I push, I can even go for a very long time or very fast and short time.
00:29:04
Speaker
But when you see some of the people at the London Marathon, as they get to Tower Bridge, two and a half hours in, and they're honest, I mean, I've got done the London Marathon, I've gone up over the bit, I think it's about 17 miles, you look across and you see people coming over and they look haunted.
00:29:25
Speaker
And I thank, I'm so pleased that I've got not that long to go, not that long to go. And I've just got, you're at the point where in my head, when I've got to that, is I can grind this out. No matter how hard it will be, I'm there. And I look to see there and they look worse than me. They haven't got past the halfway mark yet.
00:29:46
Speaker
And you have to utter respect for them. But it is about people giving themselves permission to say that was really tough and rewarding themselves to say you have overcome great amount of toughness, irrespective of time. I worked with you with Christine Bleakley on the challenge, and she was incredibly tough on herself. And when we did some work with her, he thought,
00:30:14
Speaker
You know, she was falling in all the time. It was cold. It was difficult. Water skiing across the channel. This was not a skill set that there's any background towards. And you think, well, what, what ways to get some hope into that? And the hope, if there was a bit of hope, I remember thinking, well, what point you're going to, what, what point will you decide I'm not picking the rope up again?
00:30:35
Speaker
She said, oh, no, none. I said, there we go. I remember thinking, Crikey, we've got some, this is our mechanism here that she's not going to give in. I mean, yeah. Yeah, I can go out on Strictly. Yeah, I can go out on one show and I can pick that rope up. And once you get a hook into the belief that people have got, and I think people could draw more confidence out of their own successes far more without judging about how good it is.
00:31:04
Speaker
in relation to others. It's an interesting one, Andy, because I think it's actually this idea of what is success. I think it drills into that, doesn't it? And I think some of the problem is that we live in a very successful nation. Just watch the Olympics and the Paralympic Games. We talk all the time about gold and the gold rush. And even programs are called the gold rush. And it's all about medals and places and what we're doing. And I think in that,
00:31:33
Speaker
add on top of that what you know talk about the marathon but actually we can talk about the park run you know what what what time did you go what was your time and i think we've become obsessed by metrics instead of actually thinking about what what you know if you've never run a 5k before and you turn up to the the the park run and you run around
00:31:53
Speaker
a 5k start to finish that is an enormous enormous success whether it is taking you an hour and 15 minutes or whether it's taking you 15 minutes you know it's an incredible success and i think it's just it's just rowing back i think away from you know takes talks about wearable tech and all that sort of stuff is rowing away from the metrics and actually just thinking about what what
00:32:16
Speaker
what am I going to be pleased with? You know, what's my success? What's my mark of success? And it is actually about, you know, I mean, to some extent is why I love doing ultras is that nobody ever asked you, nobody asked me what time I did at the marathon this up because it's irrelevant. Did you get round? I made it to the finish. You know, and so I think, but I think we need to do that in the shorter distances as well. Forget, you know, yes,
00:32:42
Speaker
As a personal, from a personal perspective, if you're looking to take your 5k down from an hour to 55 minutes, that's a very personal goal. What you don't want to do is take that and compare it to others. I think that's where the difficulty comes. I agree completely. I think that once you've learned about yourself
00:33:02
Speaker
and what you're capable of and then you establish a challenge around that and I think things like courses you've got to establish of the course you're going to do it on because they all vary and Parkrun, I've done 400 and something that's a lot
00:33:18
Speaker
And if I wanted to do a fast time, I'll go on a slightly short one and one with fewer turns. And I mean, you've just got ironing out the bits. You go, well, hold on. So you've got to do this time because of and then you just pick all the factors to make it go quick. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I suppose you taper for a month before as well.
00:33:41
Speaker
Instead of actually having done the part run the week before and run as hard as you possibly can. I mean, everything would change. You know, you take a day off work before it, you'd make sure your carbohydrate loaded or whatever it is that makes you go quicker. You would, you would put everything in place, you know, and again, that's, that's how you interpret performance. You have to interpret performance in the round. You can't just look at it as, as, as, as it's not the same run every time you go out.
00:34:08
Speaker
You know, what, what's the, what are the factors that are going to impact on that performance? Actually that to my mind is the learning process is actually, if, if, if at some point you want to do your best run ever by understanding the factors that impact on your run performance, that will much, you'll be much better able to, to, to institute those and actually optimize your chances of a very quick run of the PV. You know, so it's that learning process constantly.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I think if there's one of the key things I think we've pulled I think pulled out is is that is the that training is about learning about your body, trying to recognize adaptation, trying to set goals regarding what progress you can make. I think trying to see where the where the progress is in terms of I think physiological adaptation is really important. And I think heart rates are useful. And
00:35:03
Speaker
I mean, then I often think people connect little little gems to throw into that is to go, you know, it's a really hot day, you get a higher heart rate, take your job, take the job job a bit really, why it's hot, because your heart's pumping a bit more, guess why push the heat out. And so on, just but you then those bits of learning about yourself instead of learning about yourself instead of evaluating and judging yourself. And then if you get negative by just kind of accept that's because you want to try really hard, but not
00:35:34
Speaker
judge too much that your hell and damnation occurs for you as an athlete as a consequence, which we hear. I think what we have distilled this down to, Andy, is actually about personal. It's about you as a runner. And I think that's the thing. Whether it's from the programming, whether it's the goal setting, whether it's the racing, it is about you as an individual. And I think what we, you know,
00:36:03
Speaker
God, I mean, how many people do you talk to about Strava? Or where are you on the Strava list? Well, it's almost an irrelevant. It really is an irrelevant. It matters on the day, at a race, you know, if you are looking to win it, where you come does matter. But many people don't do that. And I think it is about making it as bespoke as possible. And everybody's journey, that terrible word that people use journey, but everybody's journey is different.
00:36:28
Speaker
And I think rather than make sure that you're on your rails, and it may in my mind, we often talk about this, look, drive in your lane. Don't worry about what the Ferraris are doing in the fast lane. You know, don't worry about what the Juggernauts doing behind you. Just do what you do and do it to the best that you can do it. Now, at some stage in the future, you might move from the slow lane into the middle lane, maybe into the fast lane, but that will be because of your personal journey.
00:36:55
Speaker
not because you're looking at thinking, you know, first year running marathons, I should be over there running two thirties. Well, if you are, good luck to you. But keep it personal. And I think if you do that invariably, you get a much more positive atmosphere that you'll be training and competing. Fast lane is no relative of mine, by the way.
00:37:22
Speaker
Not at our age, mate. Not at our age. No, no, no. Laid, is he laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid?
Extreme Triathlon Preparation and Follow-up
00:37:34
Speaker
Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? Laid? L
00:37:52
Speaker
Somebody obviously, well it's one of those things, about two years ago I did this thing called the Norseman which is an ultra, they call it an extreme triathlon, they call it the toughest triathlon on the planet, that's what they call it, it is tough and we made a film about it and actually that film is out there on my channels and
00:38:12
Speaker
But in a moment of weakness, I went in for the ballot for another race called the Patagon Man, which is in Patagonia in Chile. Same sort of thing, extreme triathlon. Having said after the Northman, I will never do another one of those. Here I am. You've said that many a time before, haven't you? I know, that's the trouble. There's something looser that's probably there. But yeah, so December, we've got Patagon Man, which I'm now
00:38:41
Speaker
currently and have been for a number of months now, prepping for. So I've just finished the last meso cycle and about to move into the next meso cycle, which is sort of the pre-competition, which is slightly different in this sense. Because what I do now is go really long and really long bricks. So it's quite an unusual approach. So that's currently what we're doing. And I mean, you can follow that sort of stuff.
00:39:09
Speaker
by far the best place is the white answer dot com. Nice cup of tea. Someone's bringing you tea. No one brings me tea. If you can tell them to the white answer dot com, white with a Y. And there's loads and loads and loads of content on there and I think there's ways in which you can ask questions as well and people can compose questions and actually ask for stuff and
00:39:32
Speaker
So yeah, and obviously social media, which, you know, we love social media, social media, up and downs of social media.
00:39:42
Speaker
I take a lot of abuse in my life, but I don't see social media being the cause of it. And a lot of people say so. And you just choose to engage with people. And I think people can learn a lot from having a chat with this. And the UK-run chat, we were putting this podcast out of a lovely chat hour a couple of times a week. And I've joined in for that. And I think you get a lot of good stuff there. So Greg, it's been emotional.
00:40:10
Speaker
I'm welling up as we speak, mate. That's good. It's been great, mate. Thanks for having me on, mate.